When you look at relations among Pacific countries, sometimes you’d swear World War II never. ended.
The conflict which pitted Japan against all of its neighbors really hit a nerve among all involved—especially China and the Koreas, which took a horrific pummeling from the Japanese. South Korea’s president has been loathe to have a face-to-face meeting with Japan’s prime minister—Shinzo Abe—in part because of Abe's revisionist views about Japan’s military history.
The latest skirmish involving a war era flare-up?
China has seized a Japanese cargo ship over an alleged outstanding payment hailing from 1936. In that year, a Japanese company leased a pair of Chinese ships, which were then commandeered by the Japanese Navy during the war and were ultimately sunk at sea with no compensation to the Chinese company. Now that’s a textbook case of adding insult to injury!
A Chinese court held that the Japanese ship corporation owes $30.5 million for the ships it rented on the eve of the war. It also justified the ship seizure, as the Japanese have still refused to pay. For its part, Japan’s government said the seizure is “extremely regrettable” and “is likely to have, in general, a detrimental effect on Japanese businesses working in China.”
This is the first time a Japanese company asset had been confiscated for war-linked compensation, though earlier this year a Chinese court also accepted a case seeking payment from Japanese firms over Chinese forced labor during the war. (Although China officially renounced demands for war reparations from Japan when ties were normalized between the two countries in 1972, some commentators feel these Chinese court decisions have ignored that agreement.)
China counters that these cases have to do with commercial disputes, not governmental militarism.
Still, it’s notable that the seizing of the Japansese ship comes right on the heels of China filing a formal protest against Prime Minister Abe’s recent offering to a Japanese memorial for the nation's fallen soldiers—including infamous war criminals. (By the way, Japanese leaders do this on a nearly annual basis, and it always pisses off all their neighbors, as well as the U.S.).
Why all this rehashing of World War II?
Some of it is straight-up nationalism—every country likes to defend its military history and denounce its neighbors—and some of it arises amid commercial and diplomatic disputes. Perhaps most importantly, China and Japan are duking it out over competing claims to the East China Sea. Although relations between the two major Pacific powers have been rather tense over a number of issues within recent years, this escapade in ship-seizing could reveal an unprecedented downward trajectory.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
